A Study on Ambiguity: Pedagogy and Creation in Ancient Greek Culture, Education and Drama

Abstract

Paidagogos and demiurgos are two terms of the ancient Greek language already present during the first millennium B.C. and still in use in contemporary Greek [1]. The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in their meaning according to context in which they are used – intellectual, artistic and social – and to the areas in which they appear, as well as the obvious or latent relation between them. Both the terms paidagogos and demiurgos are not one-dimensional in ancient Greek language. The semiotic tool of ambiguity, via the analysis of Jean Pierre Vernant and Page du Bois, tested through a contemporary phenomenological lens based on Merleau Ponty [2], will help us interpret the changes in their meaning, as well as the reasons why such changes may occur. In poetic, historical, political, pedagogical and other ancient texts, the terms paidagogos and demiurgos can refer to persons with very different functions and social status. The ambiguity and the reversal of the status of the demiurgos and, more clearly, of the paidagogos, appear in a far clearer way when they refer to persons (prosopa) of Greek drama, especially tragedies, like Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Ion and The Heracleidae. The findings of such research will help us penetrate the philosophical and phenomenological discourse concerning education in ancient Greece, taking into account that some of the main educational questions raised in Greek antiquity still remain relevant today.